


why are we so complicated? (love's a word i've always hated)

by softtheatrics



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Nonbinary Jehan Prouvaire, excessive use of daffodils, not as angsty as i want it to be but alas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23384734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softtheatrics/pseuds/softtheatrics
Summary: He’s going to die from this. He will not get through this, he will not get better, he will not stop loving him, he will not survive.Because Enjolras is stood on the desk in front of him, and he is monologing about who knows what, and he has his hand on Grantaire’s shoulder for stability, and he is shining red and yellow, and he is perfect.Or, flowers are Grantaire's worst enemy.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 167





	why are we so complicated? (love's a word i've always hated)

**Author's Note:**

> ok i don't write angst so like. my apologies. this is not as angsty as i want to to be. 
> 
> title is from sports by beach bunny.

That’s the thing with falling in love with people who don’t fall in love, Grantaire thinks, his head bowed over a trash can that holds a single, bloody flower. You end up dying for it. 

//

“Are you ok?” His favorite English teacher, Ms. Fantine, is kneeling on the ground beside him, her hand on his shoulder. Grantaire can’t see her face, but her hand is cold and he can see the hem of her green cardigan brushing the floor. 

“No,” Grantaire manages. “But I will be.”

Her hand on his back is stabilizing, grounding him from the thoughts that are so quickly running away from him. He wants to curl up in the cool kindness that is radiating from her hand. She sighs absentmindedly. “Do you want to switch classes? I’m sure I can switch you to one of my other periods.”

“No, no,” Grantaire glances up at her quickly. She’s sitting on her knees, the hand not on his shoulder resting in her lap. It’s strange seeing her this close, seeing her not talking. She looks older, more tired. She looks more human. In the back of his mind, he realizes he likes her more because of it. “I love this class. I love–I love him, you know? I shouldn’t switch my schedule just because my body has decided to revolt.” 

“I understand.” She rubs her thumb against his shoulder softly. “Are you feeling any better? I can send you to the nurse, or–”

“I’m ok,” Grantaire says. He sits up properly, sitting with his legs crossed in front of him and his back hunched. She’s looking at him. Not judgemental. Just looking. “I think I should go now. I’ve got biology.”

“Ok,” she says. Neither of them move. 

“Actually,” Grantaire says quietly after a moment. His voice is weaker than he wants it to be, soft and scared around the edges. “Can I stay here for a while?”

She stands up and offers him a hand. 

He spends the rest of the day making small talk and sitting in a cozy office chair. When Jehan stops by after school to drive him home, she tells him goodbye, and she tells him that she’s always there to talk, and she tells him that everyone experiences something like this. 

She puts emphasis on the last statement. He searches her face for a hint to what she is trying to tell him. He cannot find it. 

He bids her adieu, goes home with Jehan, and falls straight to sleep. 

//

“You are insufferable,” Enjolras says. His voice is ripe with irritation, but he’s smiling at him, almost fondly. Grantaire feels some sort of panging in his chest, a loud and ringing bell of pain. 

“I am wild,” Grantaire amends around an angry cough. 

//

He doesn't make it to the bathroom before his hand is filled with red-stained yellow petals. 

//

Sometimes, Grantaire stares up at the ceiling and wonders why he is still alive. The whole universe seems to be trying to kill him. One flower, one pained smile, one pitying look, one bit out remark at a time. 

How is he supposed to survive? How is he surviving?

He knows the answer. He knows the answer better than he has known anything else in the world. He knows the answer better than he knows how to spell his name, he knows the answer better than he knows what he had for dinner, he knows the answer better than he knows his mother’s birthday. 

He isn’t. 

//

“Hey, are you ok?” Jehan asks him one day on their ride home from school, flipping on the left turn signal. Their brow is furrowed and they’re chewing on their bottom lip, but it’s probably not because of the heaviness of the question. Jehan is amazing at difficult conversations, and horrible at driving. “You’ve been isolating yourself.”

“I’m alright,” Grantaire says. Jehan shoots him an unimpressed look. “I just– I’ve been sick.”

“So have I,” Jehan says forcefully. They put emphasis on each word. “So have I, Grantaire.” They slow to a stop sign, and take the break to look him dead in the eyes. “Peonies. I’ve got peonies.”

“Oh,” Grantaire says, quietly. “Daffodils.” 

Jehan nods once, looking back to the road. They drive in silence for a while, Grantaire leaning his cheek on the window. “I know you won’t say anything, but Enjolras won’t be such a jackass to you if he knows.”

“I know, I know,” Grantaire says. “But I don’t want him to know. He’ll feel bad for me.” He turns his head so his forehead is against the glass and he’s looking directly away from Jehan. “I don’t want him to apologize to me.”

“Yeah, I thought as much,” Jehan says. “Does anyone else know?”

“Ms. F,” Grantaire says. “Obviously. And Eponine.”

Jehan hums. “We’ll get through this,” they say. “The both of us.”

Grantaire wants to believe them.

//

Grantaire doesn’t believe them. 

He’s staring up at Enjolras, and he doesn’t believe Jehan. He’s going to die from this. He will not get through this, he will not get better, he will not stop loving him, he will not survive. 

Because Enjolras is stood on the desk in front of him, and he is monologing about who knows what, and he has his hand on Grantaire’s shoulder for stability, and he is shining red and yellow, and he is perfect. 

Grantaire feels vines choking him to death, he feels petals erupting in his lungs, and he does not move. He does not cough. He decides this is the perfect place to die. 

He is disappointed when he makes it home. 

//

“Are you happy?” Joly asks him one night. They’re playing Mario Kart in Joly’s basement, Joly’s head on Grantaire’s shoulder and Grantaire’s left leg thrown over both of Joly’s. His cane lies on the floor directly next to the couch, dropped there as soon as he got the chance to sit down. 

“I don’t think so,” Grantaire says. 

“Yeah, me neither,” Joly says. He sighs sadly as he hits Princess Peach with a red shell on the screen. “I am in love. And they don’t love me back.”

“How do you know?” Grantaire says. He can feel his heart falling. Not Joly, anyone but Joly. He has never known anyone that deserves the flowers less than Joly. 

“Because why would they?” Joly asks. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

The pressure in Grantaire’s chest lifts. “Joly, you are a wonder. I’m sure they love you back.”

“Both of them?” Joly asks. Grantaire, unsurprised by this admission, smiles kindly at Joly in a way that feels almost unnatural. 

“Yes, both of them,” Grantaire says. “I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be so sure,” Joly says. His character, Rosalina, falls off the edge of the track onscreen. 

“You know the Hanahaki disease?” Grantaire asks. Joly nods. “Do you have it?” Joly shakes his head. “Then you’re fine. Either you don’t truly love them, or they love you back. Either is better than the alternative.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Joly says. He puts his controller down, closes his eyes and snuggles impossibly closer to Grantaire. 

“Sometimes, I wish I were normal,” he says quietly. “I wish my brain would catch up with society.”

“I know,” Grantaire says softly, pressing a kiss to the top of Joly’s head. “I know.”

“I wish I fell in love with you, instead,” Joly says. 

“Yeah,” Grantaire replies, somewhere in between the petals in his throat and the roots in his lungs. “Me too.”

//

Enjolras catches him in the bathroom one day. 

Grantaire had a particularly cruel daydream in his Calculus class, something involving held hands and kept promises and soft smiles, and he had run out of the classroom as fast as his teacher would allow him, making it just in time in order to bleed ruined daffodils in the school toilets. 

He had not made it in time to close the door behind him. 

When he hears a shocked gasp, someone crumbling to their knees, and a hand on his back, he only hopes to all things holy that it is not who his gut is telling him it is. 

“Holy shit, are you ok?” Enjolras says, and Grantaire loses faith in a God he already does not believe in. 

“Just peachy,” Grantaire says. “Look, I know you hate me, you don’t have to pretend that–”

“I don’t hate you,” Enjolras says. Grantaire can’t see his face, but he sounds indignant. He sounds put off. He sounds sad. “We’re friends, we’ve been friends. Grantaire, do you not consider us friends?”

Grantaire coughs up another four petals, and he wants to ask him if it answers the question. “How can you not hate me?” he says instead. “I spend all my time shooting down your ideas, I live to be contrary, all you do is glare at me.”

“You make us stronger,” Enjolras says. 

He can feel something in his throat burst, and he knows he will not be able to speak the next day. 

//

Huh, he thinks, it finally got me. 

// 

He’s surprised that he makes it to his next class. 

He’s surprised he makes it to the one after that, he’s surprised he makes it home, he’s surprised he wakes up the next morning. 

It is only by the cruelest stroke of bad luck that he is still alive. 

If God is real, Grantaire decides, then she is truly not as merciful as they say. 

//

Eponine has never, for as long as he has known her, told Grantaire a lie. 

She is honest about everything, whether it be about her asshole parents, his latest outfit, or opinions on their friends.

She’s never held back the truth from him. Not on purpose, not inadvertently, not by omission. 

Eponine has, also, never, for as long as he has known her, been kind to Grantaire for longer than five minute intervals. 

When she comes over to Grantaire’s house that weekend and he asks her if he will be ok through tears that refuse to stop falling, she does not respond. Instead, she just holds him. 

She just holds him, and quietly recites things about him that she likes. 

She just holds him, and tells him that she loves him. 

She just holds him, and tells him that he is strong, that he is brave, that he is kind.

She just holds him. 

She just holds him, and she breaks every expectation Grantaire has ever had of her. 

She just holds him, and Grantaire clings onto her like a lifeline. 

She just holds him, and Grantaire is afraid. 

//

English class. 

A glimpse of a smile. 

He can’t breathe. 

“To be, or not to be. That’s the first line of Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy.”

He’s looking over. 

Be cool, be cool. 

“What is he referring to? What is it that he’s wondering what to be?”

He looks worried.

“Grantaire, are you alright?”

His eyes are widening.

He’s lunging toward him. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He really can’t breath. 

A warm hand. 

His hand?

Someone’s yelling. 

God, make them stop yelling. 

There’s blood on the table. 

Lots of blood, and a 

Daffodil, and a

Daffodil, and

Daffodils, and 

Daffodils, and 

Daffodils. 

//

They tell him the story several days later, when they’re finally ready to discharge him and he’s curled like a question under a too-thin blanket. 

Enjolras reacted before anyone noticed anything was wrong. (He was the yelling, Grantaire would realize later.) He lunged over to him, yelling for Ms. Fantine to do something, anything. 

An ambulance came soon after. 

When they came to take Grantaire to the hospital, Enjolras refused to let go of Grantaire’s hand. They were running out of time, so they allowed him to ride with them in place of a relation by law. 

When they got him to the ER for an emergency procedure on his lungs, they were startled to find that the flowers were no longer there. In fact, if it weren’t for the several full daffodils laying on Ms. Fantine’s classroom floor, it did not seem that he had the disease at all. There were no traces of any petals, no telltale roots in his lungs, no twisting vines around his throat. 

// 

The first thing Grantaire notices when he wakes up at home for the first time is that he is incredibly warm. 

The second thing he notices is that his hand is even warmer than the rest of him. 

The third thing he notices is that it’s because his hand is being held. 

The fourth thing he notices is that Enjolras is sitting in his shitty desk chair, his head is laying next to Grantaire’s hip, and the aforementioned hand is his. 

Grantaire must have moved, or made noise, or something, because suddenly, Enjolras is awake, and Enjolras is looking at him, and Enjolras won’t stop repeating that he’s sorry, he’s sorry, he’s sorry. 

“Dude, calm down,” Grantaire says. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“But I do,” Enjolras says. “I don’t deserve–”

“Yeah you do,” Grantaire says, propping himself up with his elbows. His scar doesn’t particularly hurt anymore. At least, it hurts less than the flowers did. “You deserve the world.”

“So do you,” Enjolras says forcefully.

“Hey, don’t make me get it again,” Grantaire says, jokingly. “I fell in love with you once, I can fall in love with you again.”

Enjolras looks a little devastated, a little like he’s trying to cover it up. “What?”

“Well, wasn’t it obvious that they were for you?” Grantaire asks. “I think the whole world knew. And, I mean, obviously you didn’t suddenly love me back, so I assume I’m over it.” Enjolras is shaking his head slowly back and forth, his eyes wide and his jaw slack. He doesn’t seem to notice what he’s doing. “It’s weird though, I feel the exact same as before. Just less trouble breathing.”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire feels like he’s dying again. “Grantaire, I–” He runs a shaky hand through his hair. “I–I don’t think you got over it.”

He looks up at Grantaire nervously.

“If you understand what I’m–what I’m trying to say.”

He doesn’t. Not really. The dots his brain has connected don’t make sense.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Grantaire says. Enjolras looks up at the ceiling, mustering up the resolve to say, well, something.

“I, ok, I should preface by saying that if you don’t want me here, if I carry too many bad memories, just tell me to leave, yeah?” Enjolras says. When Grantaire says nothing, he laughs, though it registers as more of a sharp exhale. “I don’t know, there was something about seeing you there, seeing you in pain, that flicked a switch somewhere in my head, you know? I’ve always cared for you as a friend, but in that moment I realised I couldn’t live without you. It hurt to think about losing you.” He takes a deep breath and looks Grantaire in the eye, and Grantaire realises that this is the first time he had during their conversation. “Grantaire, I love you. And I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Grantaire asks, he lifts their conjoined hands to his mouth, presses a soft kiss onto Enjolras’ hand. “Don’t be sorry.”

Enjolras drops his head onto Grantaire’s leg, groaning indignantly. Grantaire just laughs and places his hand gently on Enjolras’ head, half expecting his gesture to be pushed away.

“I love you,” Enjolras says quietly, his words muffled, but still audible. Still enough to make Grantaire’s heart stop.

“I love you, too,” Grantaire says. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
